I’m Giving Away Chickens (Again)

It is crazy how much pain I was in just 3 days ago and now how quickly it's turned around. Like, I'm walking just fine. No jolts of pain. As uncomfortable as this is, it's like I can feel the difference more than anything else I've done. So I'm doing it. That is definitely one of those things where you dread doing it. It's terribly uncomfortable at first, but then once you're done You're glad you did it for the rest of the day. So much energy. So much reduction in inflammation. You can just feel it right away. Good morning.

Oh, did you just poop again?

Awake, looking around.

He just pooped again.

Oh my goodness.

I just changed the poop. Oh really?

And I changed it before I went.

I know.

You're on a roll.

I'm just getting it all out.

He's just—

Say thank you for the nice clean diaper so I could fill it up. Look at his socks.

His little tiny socks go all the way up.

They go— they're like so little and they go to like his knee.

They're like knee socks. He's just looking around. That's everything we need for a pig nipple waterer, homemade. Oh well, well, we need a barrel, food-grade barrel. Now down to the paddle bit for this to drill through this hole, and I think that we've got it. Hey, Arun, hey, is your back staying strong? Yeah, good deal. Can't have your back go out. Here, is it this one? That's a little too small. 1 1/8. We need bigger. This hole saw here though might be just right because I can just get it over the threads. So I'm looking for some plastic feed pans. You know where we're getting salad? You know what, they're up at the old barn at their kitchen. Remember their kitchen? Let's go look. And Jonah wanted to show me something over there anyway, so let's go check it out. Did I even say what I'm doing? I don't think I did. We're getting 3 pigs tomorrow, 3 piglets, 1 more breeding gilt, and 2 feeder pigs because we won't be able to raise our own babies quick enough to supply our dwindling pork. You did have a bunch of bowls right there on top of the wood pile. Of course the wood pile is gone. I don't know if the sawmill guy can come today, it's starting to drizzle. Dang, he was so gonna be done. And then we could have gotten the concrete, guys. But it looks like this rain is going to delay it. What do you got over here, Jonah? Oh wow, you go up into Grandpa Henry's office.

I haven't cut a hole yet because you're playing for it.

And now you can get into there from your office.

I didn't cut a hole yet because I didn't know how you felt about that.

Yeah, I don't know. This is, uh, Grandpa's original building. I know. How do you get to it now? Just climb up there. Okay, maybe we'll do that. There's one. They have some sort of kitchen going on here. Found Mr. Brown's shoes and socks. I know we at least have a green one. It's red also. We've had— I think we have a red one too. Oh look, the Sawmill guy's here, but he's just to cover it up. Game over. What do you think, we rained out? Yeah, it's supposed to be some heavy stuff coming here between now and 12 o'clock. They're showing about 50%, 60, 70. Looky there, those were in that stall. Yeah. Okay, do you— well, we have this one but not that red one. We have a smaller one. Do you think we left it out in the field? Yeah. Randolph fixed our door yesterday. Oh, it's smooth. You going in? Yeah. Pigs for everyone. I'm trying. Yeah, I'm getting a room. 3 more pigs tomorrow. One just for you, Arun. I tease, he doesn't eat pork. Oh, there we go. But he feeds them. That's love, that's love. You guys ready for some buddies? They're actually not getting buddies. We're gonna keep them totally separate. We're gonna keep them separate because the new girl is still very young. She's only 2 months old. You don't want to breed them till they're 8 months old. Hey, let's raise them with those feeder pigs in a whole separate area, and we don't have to worry about Beefcake breeding her too early. I need to look at the nipple water and see how it's set up. Okay, plastic ring is outside and the rubber ring is inside. All right, let's build that tomorrow for the vlog and set up for the pig. Well, we'll see, that'll be part of our vlog for setting up for the pigs. And how about we'll do an instructional video for Abundant Permaculture on how to set up your own do-it-yourself pig water. I found those to work great. Lily, Gideon, time to milk! Come on! Joel was talking about in his book Animal Happiness how you want to milk about the same time because every day it helps to develop trust from the animals. Look! That's not what you planned, Arun. I know, look, I just can't find its mom.

It's—

she's right over there, honey. She's right over there. It's not going to be long before we will not be able to catch these guys. I don't think we're going to catch them once we get them out of this stall. All right, I get to be the hero and I get you back to your mom. All right, we're trying to get them back in so we can get the cows going. There we go. Oh. Where are you going? Who's next? Any day now. It's been a week since those little guys were born. Tomorrow will be a week. I thought, I thought they were going to start dropping like flies. Man, that looks amazing. That's supper right there. Those two never had a piece of grain in their life, not a, a single medication. Oh, it's hard to find, and we found it. Took a long time, but here it is. Joel was mentioning in his book that on on average per year an American eats how much pounds of lamb? They eat 0.7 pounds of lamb. We eat a lot more than that. But the point is, there's not that big of a demand for lamb, so then it's hard to find— it's especially hard to find good quality, 100% grass-fed, no medication Lamb, you're very special. These guys mean a lot to me because they're not just energy, they're medicine. You guys give me my medicine in that nutrient-dense meat. On the other hand, you know how much the average American eats per year in beef? They eat 50 pounds. Uh-oh. I just milked blood out of this teat. Oh no, what is going on, Phyllis? Okay, I got everything out. It was just blood, not a whole lot. This has been the teat that has had fat, a lot of fatty tissue, and this teat might be done for. She's still got her voracious appetite. What's interesting is there wasn't much in there. So that one may be done for. We're gonna get Polly over here now that I've milked her first round. It'll be interesting to see what happens to that bum teat. Will any more come out? Let's talk to my cow guys, see what's going on and maybe what I should do. This is a dud teat. It's never worked. Uh, this is the one we're talking about that is putting out blood right now. Look at the tissue coming out of this thing. I can feel tissue in there, but I don't know if you can dry one off while still making— milking the other. So we might have to dry her off completely. What a shame. Cut down to the very end. I don't see it. I guess I already got rid of it. Tiny speck of poop. So all this milk— don't cry over spilled milk. Yep, that's why they— you ever heard that saying? Yeah, because it happens. This is why we insist on growing our own, because it'd be really hard to trust somebody else to catch that. You'd have to have some real trust in them. And me throwing out all this milk is also why we have pigs. All year round. To be honest, if I could have either just milk product from a cow or just pork, I would probably just— I would probably pick milk because that's butter, that's cream, that's yogurt, that's cheese. We're taking the chickens up to Grandma. Jonah had a thought of putting the chick— chickens— go ahead and putting it in the Shaw, Grandma Shaw. Well, it's going to be too heavy. I mean, yeah, we're gonna have to bury it. Given that I'm recovering from that back injury I think it'd probably be easier— I'm gonna have to hold on to this while we go up the mountain. It'd probably be easier to have it empty.

These are like so light, like I can throw them.

Nice. All right, what y'all's plan? To catch, I don't know, 6 birds? Hopefully this is gonna help us find the egg eater too. We'll have a posse here, posse in our yard, posse at Grandma's. See, somebody's eating eggs. This will help us narrow it down. There's 5 chickens in here. Let's get rid of them.

Let's do that.

Gideon wants to get her one more because I don't think he got to catch one. This is all you, okay? Jonah, get— bring it tight, bring it tight. But we need to catch one of these geese too. I got the goose. Gideon, come, Gideon, come! See those three? Let's corner them. This one, get in this one. Oh wow, he caught one! I missed it. Oh well, hang on to it though, bro. There you go. Now grab it on both sides. All right, let's go get Sally. Arun's working on getting our lumber in before the rain comes. Arun, let's clear you a path. Let's get the trailer out. Let's get Grandma's mower and our wood splitter over here. I do believe that's Rosie though, so I'm sure Grandma Grandma wants Rosie back. You want to catch her and then we'll catch this other one? You only want one goose per posse because they'll buddy buddy and they won't guard. I mean, in the greenhouse over the winter where predator pressure is not a problem, but out here they need help. All right, Jonah, slow and steady up this big hill. We made it up the hill. Let's get the chickens close. We got the chicks for you, Grandma.

Oh, it's so exciting!

You ready to have them back? Yes, that was quite the respite.

Now, is this, uh, the one from your front garden, or do you think this is Rosie from the front garden, or the one from the hoop house?

That's the front garden goose. So I'll be careful. All right, let them out. They're not doing— they need a little help. It's quite the drama. Yeah, so you're— oh, don't, don't you— oh, you're about to be spoiled, Rosie. Grandma will get him a bath. Oh yeah. All right, well, we'll see if any of these are egg eaters. Yeah, you got 6 plus a goose. 7 plus a goose. I don't think that rainstorm has manifested itself, so Sun looks like it's starting to come out. I might have covered that sawmill for nothing. Really? Looks like you did a good job. Again, Ruta number 2, overcoming fear and grabbing a hold of bravery by the horns, is coming out Wednesday. A little behind the scenes here. This is plan 1 for a launch. I should say step 1, printing out a calendar. Writing. There's our goal. We're going to premiere this thing the 31st. That is going to be a live premiere again. We'll show the movie, uh, we'll be chatting during it, and then we'll be live, Rebecca and I, with question and answer. Hey Teddy! Hey Teddy, how are you? How are you? You feel the excitement? But here's a complete behind the scenes of my plan. Plans may change. This is written in pencil. The premiere on the 31st. How about on the 29th we'll do a reaction video, maybe on the 30th, something like, hey, last minute, let's get in on this premiere. Ooh, the trailer should come out on the 28th. That Saturday I'm supposed to get the trailer from Ben on 27th, so hopefully I can get it out by the 28th. Uh, let's actually put— I put right here bonus. Let's put bonus content from episode 1 because right now if you sign up for Rooted In our member area, you get episode 1, but you get 4 raw interviews. And those in and of themselves, over an hour of content, probably more like 2 hours. Nice B-roll over it. And so how about I'm just going to give you one of those on the YouTube channel on the 27th. And then on the 26th, I'll send an email. Who's on my email list? I'll do a thingy Thursday, which I end up sending on Friday. And I highlight some of the things I found interesting in the week, and I'll include on one of those things something about this. But I have PP, which is Permaculture Pigs. I'll highlight that on Friday because I'm gonna put Permaculture Pigs in my member area. Lastly, I guess this is today. Let's, let's leave this in today. I said you would get raw samples. So here's what let's do. And let's talk to Dan. Dan helps me edit these videos. Dan, and you guys get to eavesdrop in on that. Dan, since you edited those raw videos, why don't you take the best segment from each one, maybe a minute or less from each one, put a little title, on each one as it plays so they know which one that is and let that loop here at the end of the video. It's always been every day is bring your kid to work day. That's part of my entrepreneurial drive is that we can do this together as a family. Where do I get that? I feel like my dad perhaps instilled that with me. Saturdays was always work day and we'd go with him and we hated it. But, you know, all my friends— that was when you could only watch cartoons on Saturday and on TV. And I hated it. I wanted so bad just to watch cartoons on Saturday. And I would be able to go spend the night with friends, but he would pick me up Saturday morning. That was the condition. Friends could come to me because that's another worker. I actually got to find out who my real friends were. Were you coming for the four-wheeler and fun on Friday night? Well, we're gonna see if you're a real friend if you last Saturday hauling wood. When we'd go, we'd go big. We did all 50 states in 10 months in a converted school bus with 4 little tiny children. And traveling America, when we visited my friend in Minnesota— well, he wasn't my— he's my friend now. We were— he was into like the video editing, and so he— I was editing in the bus, my wife was inside entertaining, and And I don't know what led him to say this, but I'm editing, he's kind of over my shoulder, and he says— we're in Minnesota— he says, "You know it gets -60 here in Minnesota." And you know, I'm editing, I stop. -60? Don't bad things happen at -60? Yeah, your car won't start and your freeze-freeze is off in 3 minutes. Fast forward, we're in Arizona, 3 inches of rain a year. We have 40 to 80 inches of rain in North Carolina. It don't rain out west. If you would have told me 5 years ago you're gonna have a pole barn here in 5 years, I probably would have laughed at you. I probably would have been like, same thing with Rebecca, because I would have been like I'll just use, I'll just use our old barn. I'll just use what we have, you know. I was still kind of in that scarcity mentality and not in the mentality of abundance, of like, let's do it right, and if we don't have the means, let's find the means to make it happen. And so there was a mental shift from our difficult times to where we are now, there was a huge mental change, and that included a mindset of abundance that would enable something like this. And I say so big, but it's not really. I mean, yeah, it's expensive, it's nice. We went all out and got the concrete so we can easily scrape the stuff out. But in that concrete, I engraved my name, Big Papa. Nobody calls me that yet, but I'm thinking ahead. I want my grandkids to know, remember, I love you. I loved you before I even knew you. I built this for you.

He had read a book about changing your diet to help your health, and we actually got into a huge fight, like a 3-day fight. Like couldn't talk to each other, like would get really offended when the other person was trying to like say what they wanted to say. And we got into this like this huge argument and it was just like, I felt super offended that he wanted to change our diet because that was like my realm, that was my domain in the house. And here he was like coming in and saying like, we're not gonna eat sugar, we're going paleo. All these things. And I just was like, I was so angry at him. I don't— I think it was probably a lot more angry at just the whole situation, not necessarily at him, but just like our whole lives felt like they were spiraling out of control because he was so sick.

I've been an entrepreneur, seems like, from then, from, from doing wood to then when I saw the movie Beethoven, I had to have a Saint Bernard. And then I realized All my life I would get a passion and for some reason I had to turn it into a business. I don't know, maybe it's so it could pay for itself. So not only did I get a St. Bernard, I got a male and a female and bred and sold St. Bernard puppies. And incidentally, that's how I got through college debt-free. Paid for my own college raising St. Bernards. So somewhere along the line, you know, I was a snowboarder. I became a snowboarder, having fun, you know, doing it as best you can in Western North Carolina, driving 2 hours snowboarding on ice, and saw this snowboarding magazine with an ad for what you call a mountain board, which is pretty much a big skateboard with wheels, like snowboarding but with wheels, or surfing or whatever. And so I sat on that for a while and sat on it. There's no way to try it, no stores had it. This was early on in mountain boarding, and finally a year I saved that money. I just went for it. But the moment I got on that thing, it was so much fun because now I didn't have to drive 2 hours to the mountain. Now I didn't have to wait on snow, which is, uh, 9 months without snow or more here. And I could just go out of my door on grass, dirt roads, gravel, whatever, ride down the mountain on this mountain board. So just like the St. Bernards, I had to turn mountain boarding into a profession. Like, I had to get paid for it. Thank you, Dan, for rolling that. So guys, if you want those raw interviews, you got to go to watch Rooted. Look, you just updated it. And look, you can get just the Rooted series. A lot of you people were asking for this. You just wanted the entertainment piece. Well, here's the hack. Well, if you want to get the best deal, get both Rooted and Abundant Permaculture, our member area. But if you want Just Rooted. Here's the hack. Click right there. You can get it, $5.99 a month. You get to attend the live show of Rooted. You get to, uh, watch Rooted One. You get to— where's the raw stuff? Oh, where's the raw stuff? All right, time out from the business stuff. Just got off the phone with my assistant Heather. She's gonna do some updates before I give you guys a tour. Inside the new level of our membership. We need 30 minutes for Heather to set that up. Arun is cooking Indian Wednesday, our favorite day, except it's gonna be Thai Wednesday. Rebecca's up and at 'em. Jonah's watching the baby. Yes, you're making, uh, popcorn.

Yes.

How good do you feel? You feel good.

I do feel good. I feel a lot better. I feel a lot better than I did Sunday night. I felt terrible Sunday night, but today I feel much better. Even Monday I felt okay going to the hospital. I didn't actually feel sick. Yeah, it kind of felt weird going to the hospital not feeling so bad, but I'm glad that I got checked out. I'm sure everything was okay.

What happened to your popcorn?

I don't know. I've never had it go this bad.

Can you say the— like chocolatey popcorn? Can you say the Burn It Up Cooking Show is what happened to your popcorn?

I tried to burn it up.

The Arun's fine.

He's like, burn it up quick and show.

Yum. That's not so bad. Cooking with Arun Kumar. Thai chicken and rice. A special for me, which I've already tasted. Absolutely delicious. It's like a fried chicken with cheese. Yeah, cheese on top. It's so good. Good job. Okay guys, Heather has got the stuff ready. The link for that is down in the description, or you can go to watchrooted.com. Once you're inside, once you sign up and pay for monthly, you can watch Rooted there. Of course, you can hit that and you can screen to your TV right there. There's a screen to your TV. You can, um, go watch these raw interviews that we gave you a sample of. But aren't these great? These are going to be amazing. I think you guys will really enjoy them. Go check that out, watchrooted.com, or link down in the description.